A disputed essay assignment that asked students in a California school district to argue "whether or not you believe the Holocaust was an actual event in history" incorporated a source that dismissed gassings in concentration camps as a "profitable hoax."

The San Bernardino Sun first reported that the Rialto Unified School District instructed eighth-graders to "write an argumentative essay, utilizing cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe the Holocaust was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain."

But initial reports on the disputed essay largely overlooked one of the three sources provided to students, extensive text lifted directly from a Holocaust Denial and conspiracy website, biblebelivers.com.au, titled "Is the Holocaust a Hoax?"

"Though six million Jews supposedly died in the gas chambers, not one body has ever been autopsied and found to have died of gas poisoning," the webpage reads. "We have been shown piles of bodies from World War II, but most of these persons died of typhus or starvation or Allied bombings and a great many of those were murdered Germans, not Jews. Roughly the equivalent of ten football fields should be packed full of gassed bodies to present as evidence, yet not one body has ever been discovered."

"It is not denied concentration camps existed," it later adds. "Tragically, many died of typhus or starvation, as often happens in such situations. There is, however, no evidence that any gassings occurred for the reasons of genocide."

A spokeswoman for the Rialto Unified School District defended the assignment last week as an exercise in "developing critical thinking skills." The spokeswoman then told KTLA on Monday that an academic team was revising the assignment.

TPM has reached out to the school district for comment on the source.

Here's the text of that source, which was provided in full along with the essay prompt:

Within five minutes, any intelligent, open-minded person can be convinced that the Holocaust gassings of World War II are a profitable hoax.

Fred A. Leuchter is America's leading specialist on the design and fabrication of execution equipment, including homicidal gas chambers. In 1988, Leuchter scraped samples from the alleged gas chamber walls in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Lublin. Cyanide residue would be clearly evident on all these walls if gassings did occur. To his astonishment, Leuchter found no significant cyanide traces in any one of these rooms.

In 1991, the Polish government repeated these tests to disprove Leuchter's findings, but they as well found no evidence of any gassings ever occurring.

The structural integrity of these "gas chambers" is also extremely faulty. These rooms have ordinary doors and windows which are not hermetically sealed! There are large gaps between the floors and doors. If the Germans had attempted to gas anyone in these rooms, they would have died themselves, as the gas would have leaked and contaminated the entire area. Also, no equipment exists to exhaust the air-gas mixture from these buildings. Nothing was made to introduce or distribute the gas throughout the chambers. There are no provisions to prevent condensation of gas on the walls, floors or ceilings. No exhaust stacks have ever existed.

Though six million Jews supposedly died in the gas chambers, not one body has ever been autopsied and found to have died of gas poisoning. We have been shown piles of bodies from World War II, but most of these persons died of typhus or starvation or Allied bombings and a great many of those were murdered Germans, not Jews. Roughly the equivalent of ten football fields should be packed full of gassed bodies to present as evidence, yet not one body has ever been discovered.

The Germans documented everything in meticulous detail from shrubbery to arbors, but no pre-war or wartime plans or documents exist that detail or even mention any gas chambers for reasons of genocide. All documents ever presented were drawn up AFTER the war.

Even if we threw away all the evidence and accounted for every so-called gas chamber, it would have taken 68 YEARS to accomplish gassing six million Jews!

Even The Diary of Anne Frank is a hoax. Portions of the diary were written with a ball point pen. These pens were not in use at the time Anne Frank lived.

It is not denied concentration camps existed. Tragically, many died of typhus or starvation, as often happens in such situations. There is, however, no evidence that any gassings occurred for the reasons of genocide.

Israel continues to receive trillions of dollars worldwide as retribution for Holocaust gassings. Our country has donated more money to Israel than to any other country in the history of the world -- over $35 billion per year, everything included. If not for our extravagantly generous gifts to Israel, every family in America could afford a brand new Mercedes Benz. Surely the American people would be outraged if they realized their hard-earned money is being squandered in these difficult times.

With all this money at stake for Israel, it is easy to comprehend why this Holocaust hoax is so secretly guarded. The Jewish name for Holocaust is "Shoah." In Zionist circles, it is known as "Shoah Business." If nothing else, this unbelievable coverup demonstrates the irrepressible Zionist influence and control of our country. Their only defense against the facts is to cry out "antisemitic," "Skinhead" or "Nazi," whereas the majority of those who question the Holocaust are ordinary citizens...though you would never know it from the media.

In whatever way you can, please help shatter this profitable myth. It is time we stop sacrificing America's welfare for the sake of Israel and spend our hard-earned dollars on Americans.

There are compelling reasons to believe that the so-called holocaust never existed. Page 223, in The Diary of Anne Frank, (Pan Horizons edition, Pan Books Ltd., London, 1989), indicates that the size of Auschwitz, the most notorious of all German work camps, WAS VERY SMALL, with only 11,000 people (many of whom may not even have been Jews) being evacuated by the Germans at the time of the Russian advance in 1945. Certainly, compared to Spielberg's film, Schindler's List (which Emilie Schindler, Oskar's widow, said was full of lies), and other Jewish propaganda, that millions upon millions of Jews were systematically exterminated, 11,000 people is a very small number. Simple arithmetic tells us that the Germans would have had to have had hundreds of camps, or else they would have had to exterminate 137 people PER HOUR, in order for six million Jews to have been exterminated at such small camps as Auschwitz, a feat that would have been humanly impossible considering that, according to Douglas Reed's Behind the Scene and The Controversy of Zion, a mere 850,000 soldiers and others were killed by the entire German and Japanese war machines combined during WW2 (see p.397-400 of Douglas Reed's book Controversy of Zion). People who would believe the Jewish propaganda that six million Jews were exterminated by Hitler must KEEP IN MIND THE SMALL SCALE CONSTRUCTION OF AUSCHWITZ AND THE VERY FEW OTHER GERMAN WORK CAMPS THAT EXISTED DURING WW2.

On July 13, 1994, a documentary on the life of Charles A. Lindbergh broadcast on the Public Broadcast System (PBS - KENW-TV) said that when Lindbergh visited one of these few camps in Germany following WW2, he was told that 25,000 died in 1-1/2 years. Again, simple arithmetic tells us that 25,000 times a half dozen camps does not equal 6,000,000. In fact, it doesn't even equal 600,000. . . .

It is an interesting fact that the number of so-called persecuted Jews KEEPS INCREASING. Hal Greenwald, program director for the Hillel Foundation at Duke University, a Jewish student group, has been promoting the idea that NINE MILLION JEWS WERE EXTERMINATED IN HITLER'S GAS CHAMBERS (New York Times, Nov. 9, 1991, AP). NOW IT'S 9 MILLION AND GROWING. ..JUST LIKE OUR DEBT/TAX MONEY SUPPLY...THE NUMBERS JUST KEEP COMING OUT OF THIN AIR. . .(The Bible Caused Economic and Financial Slavery in the New World Order by Lee Cheney).